The India in the Artist’s Eye Festival continues this weekend with a pair of concerts by a pair of performers in a “musical dialogue,” and next week with a Chancellor’s Colloquium featuring a pair of speakers on Indian music.
The concert format is “jugalbandi,” a term that translates as “entwined twins,” describing a musical dialogue between two solo performers, in this case, Sikkil Gurucharan and Shujaat Khan, legendary Indian musicians in India’s two great classical music systems, Carnatic and Hindustani, respectively.
Exploring melodic modes (raga), lyric (sahitya) and rhythm (tala), through collaboration and improvisation, the artists reveal both what is distinctive and complementary in the two music systems.
The concerts will be in Jackson Hall at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, at 8 p.m. Saturday (March 4) and 2 p.m. Sunday (March 5). Preperformance talks are planned both days: 7 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday, also in Jackson Hall.
Tickets for Saturday, tickets for Sunday.
The Chancellor’s Colloquium Distinguished Speaker Series, Tuesday, March 7, is on the topic, “Indian Music Between Past and Present: Conversations on Ethics, Archives and Mortality.”
The speakers:
- Davesh Soneji, associate professor, Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania — His research focuses primarily on religion and the performing arts in South India, but he also studies gender, class, caste and colonialism.
- Katherine Butler Schofield (née Katherine Butler Brown), senior lecturer, Department of Music, King’s College, London — She is a cultural historian and ethnomusicologist whose work focuses on South Asia, specifically the music of the Mughal Empire and the colonial Indian Ocean.
The program comprises the colloquium, 4-5:30 p.m.; and reception, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public. Please register here.
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Dateline Staff, 530-752-6556, dateline@ucdavis.edu